I have been contributing to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects since February 2004 and have made more than 20 thousands of edits in (mostly) Polish and English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. I'm an admin in all three, a Polish Wikipedia CheckUser, a Commons bureaucrat and a Wikimedia steward. I was one of the founding members of the Wikimedia Polska Association. Frankly, I have been less active in the Wikimedia projects in the last few months, but I'm looking forward to resuming my activities.

I currently study marketing and management at the Wrocław University of Economics and work as a freelance English-Polish translator (I've done for Microsoft and Adobe).

I want Wikipedia to still be open and free, which means that I support limiting the use of non-free content (e.g. fair use pictures) to a minimum. I also generally support Wikipedia's sister projects, but on the other hand I think that some of them were bad ideas from the start, so I don't think all of them deserve the same level of attention. I also strongly believe in multilingualism and in supporting local communities and involvement of more people from outside the US and Western Europe in Wikimedia affairs.

In November 2006, the Board, office staff, and chapter representatives met in Frankfurt for three days to plan for the future of the Foundation.

Seven months later, what has been achieved? True, the staff has grown, but that makes the questions even more acute: Where is the fundraising strategy? Where is the technical road map? What is the plan for sustainability? International expansion and partnerships may be more exciting, but the role of a Board is to focus on the core issues, to protect the basic assets, and to ensure that the project remains vibrant and relevant. I hope to concentrate on that.

As a registered user on Wikipedia since early 2002, I helped to shape some of the basic guidelines. I have raised money for the Foundation, and opened doors for more money to come our way. I have also spent almost twenty months working in the Foundation office, and know the inner mechanisms intimately.

In my personal life, I have worked in various media for both the profit and non-profit sectors, and have even edited print encyclopedias professionally. I am proud to state that I am still an active editor on various projects.

I am heavily involved with en.Wikinews and also an Administrator. I have published nearly 450 articles on en.Wikinews since I joined in January of 2006. I have also written several interviews exclusive to Wikinews and have also been one of the developers for Wikinews Video 2.0 and Wikinews Weather (BETA). I created 2 promotional videos for wikinews and was the person to first organize and start Wikinews Weather (again after more than 2 1/2 years), to which is updated and maintained by me and another user. I hope to get many users on various Wikis involved in the broadcast and recording of Wikinews Video and Wikinews Weather.

My biggest Wiki-wide goal is an attempt for users on various project to work together on certain issues and ideas and to help in developing new ways in gathering information and more efficient ways of delivering that information to the world.

I believe all Wikimedia projects should get the same attention when decisions regarding policies/finance/etc are made and that those polices should conform to the needs and goals of each project whenever possible. I also believe that the community of each project should be more involved in Board decisions that would drastically change the operation of their project(s).

I have served on the Board for 9 months as an elected member (see my 2006 platform). I have also acted as Executive Secretary of the Board during this time. The Board I joined has overseen some of the most significant changes in the history of the Foundation. As an organization, we have

substantially expanded our international staff, including the new position of Volunteer Coordinator to better work with our global community.

Progress on other fronts has been heating up (license compatibility, institutional partnerships such as the Encyclopedia of Life, search for a permanent Executive Director, plans for the next fundraiser, and so on). I hope I will be able to continue my work in these and other areas. :-) Please see "9 months of wiki madness" for a more personal view of my time on the Board so far and my hopes for the future. Thank you!

I have been involved in Wikipedia and other WMF projects since May 2003, being the first admin on it.wiki. In June 2005 I was one of the founders of Wikimedia Italia and the first president (still in the role). I'm bureaucrat on it.wiki, it.news, it.source and it.wikt. I'm a (not very active) member of the Special Projects Committee, an OTRS admin and press contact for it.wiki.

I've some basic points and ideas:

WM projects must remain free and open

we have to share knowledge

WMF is a world wide organization

our communities are both precious and different

as a chapter member I see every day which are WMF problems: for instance, internal and external communication, clearness on which is the purpose of chapters, relationship with communities, donations and donors follow-up...

according to my experience, sharing free knowledge requires that you have something to share, and it's not so obvious: the world is full of unknown knowledge. A first step is to recognize this knowledge and making it accessible.

I'm convinced that WMF should invest in promoting and allowing further improvement of its own projects other than Wikipedia, especially in creating and growing these projects in disadvantaged areas, for instance Africa.

WMF has got an enormous potential, still used only in part. Until and unless WMF doesn't have a well defined structure, and an organization chart that includes the Board, the Communities and the Chapters, it will be difficult to handle.

Chapters are essential to the Foundation and they have to be properly used and strongly supported.

As a board member, I will return the Foundation to its core purpose: publishing a user-editable encyclopedia on the Internet. I will support relocating or shutting down non-Wikipedia projects. I will oppose any attempt by the Foundation to publish content in other forms, such as books. However, I believe publishing our content is important, so it can be available to a wider audience, including people without Internet access. I would actively seek to partner with other organisations who can achieve this goal.

I will reduce our overhead to a bare minimum, using as many of our assets as possible to support our Internet hosting concerns. I will explore additional funding sources besides user donations, such as grants, sponsorship and advertising.

I will improve our technical competence though a variety of means, such as hiring additional technical employees, and ensuring we have a clear idea of how we will expand to fill the demand for our content.

I have been a MediaWiki developer and Wikimedia system administrator since 2004, and I believe this gives me a unique insight into how our organisation works on a technical level, and what changes need to be made to ensure our continued success.

Hello, my name is Kim Bruning. I have been somewhat responsible for restoring and maintaining dispute resolution on enwiki. I now work mostly on process, and occasionally help with emergencies. I have also been coding and helping out on Omegawiki, starting this year.

For the foundation, the issues of day to day management, servers, and continuity are important. I think we all agree on that, so let's look at a different issue:

There are currently 700 wikis in over 250 languages across many projects. Communication between those wikis is practically none-existent, making it hard for people to learn from each other.

Examples:

One wiki was banning admins from a different wiki

Several wikis don't use consensus

One wiki had a POV-violation in the site-notice

Many wikis have never heard of Assume Good Faith

We also need to think more about talking with other non-profit organizations. They may have already learned lessons that we are still struggling with.

So day to day management, and improvement of internal and external communication is what I'd like to work on these coming two years. If you want to help me achieve that, please vote for me, or contact me, or both!

I want to see a stronger and more democratic Foundation, better guidance and assistance for volunteers, and a sharpened focus on our core goals. The Foundation needs to be stronger, in terms of its vision, its leadership of our volunteer community, its brand, and its accountability.

As a Board member, I will advocate a roadmap for our future development. I will also focus on expanding our reach outside Europe and North America, and improving collaboration and idea-sharing between wikis. We have much to learn from each other! I will respectfully promote my view that all board members should be elected.

I have been a Wikipedian for 2 years. I'm an administrator on the English Wikipedia, an AWB developer, and I have co-written several Featured Articles. I have experience at a similar level to this role, having been a member of the Student Union Council and the Finance Committee at Brunel University. I live on a small farm in England.

I respect what the Wikimedia Foundation has accomplished so far with limited resources and many forces pulling on it. I want to fill some of the gaps and make it a more functional organization. Finances are a constant issue, as Wikimedia must bring in more money and find new donation sources. Brand name value can help support operating funds, but this must be done carefully to preserve neutrality and also protect brands from outsiders trying to exploit them. Relationships with each project and its diverse participants need to be cultivated. The board must listen carefully to reflect the will of the community and not just the loudest voices.

Beyond working on Wikipedia articles, my Wikimedia experience has covered a variety of areas. For many, if you recognize my name it may be because I started The Wikipedia Signpost at the beginning of 2005. Although not intended as a universal news source for Wikimedia issues, it's perhaps as useful as any other source, and it has many readers from languages and projects other than just the English Wikipedia. My other Wikimedia involvement has included serving as chair of the Communications committee. As a lawyer, I have also given occasional advice to the Wikimedia Foundation, when its legal needs coincide with my ability to help. I believe that I understand the challenges and would bring a valuable perspective to the board.

I found Wikipedia in 2004 and began quietly writing about classical music, wondering what kind of crazy person spent so much time on it. A year later I was on OTRS, a press contact, and a founding member of the Communications Committee; I was then appointed to the Board in December 2006.

I'm currently in law school, where I staff a law and economics journal. I am an intern for a nonprofit online legal education project, and a classical musician.

While on the board I worked with issues including licensing policy, free content and free culture advocacy, public relations, and strategic decisions such as branding and partnership; I hope to see some of these issues through beyond the short term I've already served.

My interest is for the Board to act with a long-term view of its mission in mind, and not to take actions which might compromise WMF's future. To do this we must have a clear picture of what our values are and what our mission is, and we must maintain our commitment to being a free resource so the content does not need WMF to survive. Beyond this, I see us pursuing partnerships with like-minded organizations to carry our mission beyond the scope of what Wikimedia can do.

i am a professional composer and teacher at the rotterdam conservatory, in my professional career i have been an interim manager for years as well. having been appointed as an elected community-member to the expanded board of trustees in december 2006, i had the honor to serve a 6 month term since (see further explanation). having grown up from the projects, i became a sysop at nlwiki in may 2004, on meta in april 2005, and have been a steward since june 2005; i was founding and first president of wikimedia nederland, a member of the now dormant special projects committee, and currently chair of the audit committee. i have tried my best to still keep in touch with as many of basic things as possible going on in the projects, not an easy job for a busy board member.

in the frankfurt board retreat of 2006 (see my report) i compared wikimedia to a giant with feet of clay, this has been my main worry and concern: to consolidate the organisation of volunteers (like i myself am) with a core of newly hired skilled people, which supports our further growth into the future and remain an independent organization. since this is only partly accomplished, i would like to further contribute to the next steps, which will enhance our growth and outreach, our quality and stability, our independence and responsibility.

i believe we are in fact a new 21st century generation of "encyclopedists", collecting more than knowledge alone: edito ergo sum (quotation).

I've been involved for over four years, now, and have held a variety of volunteer posts with ENWP and with the Foundation. I was probably best known for my OTRS work up until my recent election to the ENWP arbitration committee. I work as a software development manager and as a semiprofessional musician in addition to my volunteer work.

In essence, the purpose of my candidacy is to bring a higher degree of professionalism to the Board of Trustees and the daily operations of the Foundation. The Foundation needs to attract large donors to maintain solvency without resorting to advertising. To attract large donors, the leadership of the Foundation from the Board on down must be professional and responsible, and must be able to reconcile the unique values of the constituent projects with the expectations of the donor community. This will involve bylaws changes to assure donors that future boards will be well qualified. It will also require that we make the Executive Director position an attractive one to the top-flight talent we want. That will mean more delegation and will require a board that is comfortable leading rather than doing. As a member of the Board of Trustees, my work would be directed almost exclusively towards making these changes.

I have been a Wikimedia contributor for nearly 2.5 years. Since then I have made thousands of edits and deletions both on commons and pl.wiki. Now my direct contributions in projects are low, but I'm working on getting photo-passes on different events for making photos for Wikimedia (eg. the Metalmania festival) which consumes lots of time. In December 2006 I was elected for Board Member of Wikimedia Polska Association. I am the author of the Wikimedia Community Logo, used as the logo of Planet Wikimedia. My goal in the Board would be to make it more aware of the situation in post-communist countries, being not as rich as the western countries which dominate in the current Board.

I have been involved in Wikimedia projects since December 2002 (4.5 years), mainly on Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Commons and Wikisource. I am one of the early contributors of Wikisource, from when it was still called Project Sourceberg. I am admin on about a dozen Wikimedia projects and steward since June 2005. I proposed the creation of Wikimédia France in November 2003, of which I was secretary in 2004-2005.

I am a computer professional specialized in free software since 1998. Before that I worked for 10 years with NGOs on humanitarian, social and cultural projects. I would like to bring my experience of non-profit organizations and free culture movement to the service of Wikimedia Foundation. I would like the Foundation to be an influential organization, to bring free knowledge far and wide. My main input would be working on financial independence.

Wikipedia is an absolutely phenomenal thing. The Wikimedia Foundation exists to support both Wikipedia and its many sister projects by providing both financial and infrastructural support. It stands to reason that we need people on the Board who understand what we're really here for--providing as much freely-licensed content to as many people as possible in their own native language. The Board of Directors should have, nay, needs to have people who are as closely aligned with this guiding principle as possible. As a board member, I would strive to play towards my individual strengths of management, technical know-how, and my ability to communicate with others. However, none of us must ever be too proud to not stop and ask for help; be it from outside help, developers, local administrators, and even the normal day-to-day contributors--both registered and anonymous. I believe many times those involved "higher-up" in the running of the Foundation can, at times, lose sight of that core policy I highlighted. This is something I promise to never do.

I believe that the Foundation is currently making a major mistake on what has recently to me become a very major issue. The WMF has long held a policy of "No Open Proxies" allowed for editing. The feeling has often been that quite a large amount of vandalism is coming from such proxies. The ability has long existed for us to be able to soft-block those proxies (in that registered users can edit, but anonymous ones cannot). For quite some time, Tor was soft-blocked. However, earlier this year, unilateral action was taken to hard block all of these proxies, preventing even valuable users from being able to contribute. When Board members were contacted, they did nothing. Rather, Jimbo encouraged discussion, which got nowhere due to a set mindset that is impossible to break. In the meantime, other users were mowed down for this same issue. Are we to allow the projects to lose highly valuable and valued contributors simply because the Foundation will not act? If I am elected, I would like to have the issue visited at a Foundation-level. While we may not see the results I would prefer, I would like to see the Foundation at least exert effort to see if this policy does in fact need revising, rather than the lack of action by anyone.